ABSTRACT
Plague was the most devastating disease that could hit an urban community in the early modern period. It was a regular visitor to London for three centuries from the Black Death of 1348 until its last outbreak in 1665. The Dutch consistory was careful when employing people to look after its plague victims. On 7 June the Privy Council enjoined the Lord Mayor to stop the visitors of the Dutch and Walloon-French congregations from criss-crossing the City and moving freely between the infected and the healthy and to guarantee the maintenance of household segregation among the foreign communities. The Dutch community might have been ‘an example of foreign civility close to home’ in 1563, but by 1665 it had nothing of which to be proud. The efforts of the Dutch congregation in London certainly outstripped those of its English host community during the plague of 1563.
